A Dallas ISD staffer was arrested last Friday after a video emerged on social media showing the man hitting a student.
The video shows the staffer apparently punching a 17-year-old student in the face, knocking the student’s glasses from his face and causing the student to stumble and fall to the ground.
The student’s mother took him to the hospital after she found out about the incident. As of Thursday, no update on the student’s condition was available.
The incident took place at Justin F. Kimball High School in the west Oak Cliff area of South Dallas.
Marcel Brooks, now identified as the DISD employee in the video who allegedly punched the student, was charged with assault causing bodily injury.
The arrest of the 31-year-old Brooks, a hall monitor and coach, did not quell angst among students at Kimball High School. Students staged a walkout-style protest to demand Dallas ISD increase transparency and release a detailed incident report.
JFK Protest, a student-led organization that purports to represent “the voice of the students,” demanded on social media that Brooks’ punishment should not stop with his arrest.
“The coach should face more consequences and this behavior is absolutely unacceptable,” the post read. “We demand justice.”
Dallas ISD said it took swift action to hold all parties in the incident accountable and released a statement condemning Brooks’ behavior.
“Our job as educators is to provide a safe learning environment where students can learn, grow, and excel,” the statement read. “The actions captured on the video in no way reflect that commitment, and Dallas ISD will not tolerate this type of behavior.”
Still, despite the district’s assertions, it has been widely viewed among community members and district parents for years now that DISD suffers from serious mismanagement.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, a poll conducted in September of last year found that 49% of respondents believed that DISD’s poor student outcomes were a consequence of mismanagement on the part of the district’s leadership.
The video of the incident is short. A source that spoke to the local community journalism organization Smash Da Topic claimed Brooks acted in self-defense.
Brooks was released after posting a $1,500 bond.
There have been 4,386 reports of assault this year in the City of Dallas, according to the Dallas crime analytics dashboard.
